My Existence
by Machi
Summary: You exist in each and every world. The Shopkeeper Watanuki takes a glimpse into another world from his own, into the life of another self locked in the world of Colonel Jade Curtiss. Jade x Watanuki
1. The Colonel

_There is a phenomenon in this world that few understand._

_With the existence of one world, there are many alternate existences,_

_Some merely in the world one already lives in. _

_However_

_Along with those alternate existences are others, far more complicated_

_Far more beautiful._

_Other worlds and universes in which we exist, that are far beyond our grasp._

_You can exist on many planes. Perhaps you are a normal person here_

_But a powerful sorcerer in the next._

_On the flip side, perhaps in another world, you are a tormented slave_

_While in this life, you take your comforts... for granted._

In the flawless silence of night, the shopkeeper Watanuki Kimihiro blew out a thin stream of silver smoke form his mouth. His teal-and-silver yukata tumbled lazily from the cushion of the antique couch and to the wooden floor.

_With this is mind, is it possible..._

_For you to be satisfied with knowing, perhaps in this existence you suffer..._

_...But in another, you have found happiness?_

Watanuki let out a faint chuckle, and one golden eye opened, glimpsing out towards the full moon in the night sky. A Cheshire grin slid up onto his youthful face.

"...And what world shall I visit next?" He slowly removed the pipe from his mouth. A slender arm reached out, swirling the kiseru in the air, the smoke slowly taking shape...

_The Score reads as follows:_

_A boy shall emerge from forgotten ashes;_

_His fire shall warm your cold heart._

* * *

><p>Colonel Jade Curtiss glanced up with red eyes, the orbs sliding towards the Scorer that stood not too far away in the room with him and the rest of his... party. At the last sentence, even Emperor Peony, who had been busy sitting with a rappig in his lap halted in shock. There was no denying that the rest of the gang had hit an unanimous silence.<p>

The now forty-year-old man said nothing as he gazed to the Scorer from behind his glasses, taking everything in. He remained seated in his teal-and-white military uniform, his long sandy-brown hair draped over his shoulders.

However, Luke had no problem blurting out what he was thinking.

"_What? _Say that again?" The red-head let out from where he stood by the buffet table at Jade's party.

The Scorer paused, before looking back down, rereading. Jade's expression didn't change as the words left their lips.

"A boy shall emerge from forgotten ashes; His fire shall warm your cold heart."

"The Score has always been vague," A woman named Tear stated. The brown-haired beauty looked towards Jade, who merely reached up, pushing his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose. "Its merely a glimpse into the new year. It could mean anything." She gave a pointed look towards Emperor Peony, who was staring towards Jade with an almost mischievous look. "Don't get too excited."

"Its the most interesting thing I've heard for him so far!" Peony commented, and the tan-skinned, fair-haired king leaned back into his chair, his rappig sitting on his lap. The dual rabbit-pig hybrid merely oinked in the cheerful man's lap. "A boy rising from the ashes..."

It was then, that finally, the birthday boy Jade spoke.

"Ah, it seems that my intentions have finally been revealed." Jade turned and looked towards Luke, who froze under his gaze. "...It seems the Score has finally revealed this old man's true feelings for you, Luke." The tone of his voice made it hard to tell if he was joking or not.

He was.

"G-gross. Are you out of your mind?" Luke let out, and the young man took a visible step back, into Tear. The woman closed her eyes, shaking her head a bit. Jade, on the other hand, merely smirked faintly and let out a laugh.

"What? You'd so easily insinuate that I'm suffering dementia? I'm hurt."

"No you're not!"

Jade ignored Luke before looking back to the Scorer, who had a small smile on their face. The colonel pressed his lips together in thought, but otherwise made no other motion to reveal the gears turning in his head. Instead, he spoke to the Scorer who was still standing patiently. "Will what be all?"

"Yes," The Scorer replied, and she bowed her head, along with the two guards who flanked her. "That concludes the Score for your birthday, Colonel Curtiss. May you have a prosperous year."

"Thank you." Jade nodded his head back, and soon, the Scorer and guards left the room to be escorted out.

The party the now forty-year-old man was having started talking again. It was being hosted in one of the many rooms of Emperor Peony the IX's castle in the floating city of Grand Chokmah. While the room itself, with his cool blue hues and beautiful white accents, was lavish, the party itself was not in favor of Jade's more... subdued nature. Jade was Peony's childhood friend, after all. The King only wanted to make sure he was happy (plus, it meant he got to see Jade's unfortunately no longer available sister, Nephry).

The food of course, was good, and food could truly bring people together. A good portion of friends Jade had made whilst on their long journey to save the world had come to celebrate with the Colonel (after all, this was his 40th birthday... he was over the hill!). It was when the cake finally came out, and everyone had gathered around: Luke and a (rather pregnant) Tear, Guy, Anise (who was sticking close to Guy, who only seemed to be scooting away out of habit), Jade's sister Nephry, and of course, Peony, that Jade looked at all of them and offered something of s smile.

"A toast!" Peony stated cheerfully, and he lifted a glass with his right hand, the left busy with his rappig Sapphir tucked under his arm. "To the mighty Colonel Jade Curtiss! Still alive and kicking after all these years!"

"Yeah Jade," Guy stated, a smile on the blond swordman's face as he lifted his own glass. "Have any words for us?"

Jade let out a small hum, before lifting the glass up.

"Well," The colonel stated, "I believe I mentioned long ago that it was my personal goal to drive you youngsters crazy by the time I hit forty, and-"

Jade halted in mid-sentence, almost dropping his glass. His guest let out simultaneous gasps as the man grabbed at his chest, slowly starting to sink down to his knees.

"Jade!" Luke cried out, and his eyes went wide as he stepped towards him. Tear grabbed his shoulder.

"Luke, step back, he needs to breathe!" Tear started, but before she could administer any help, Jade's voice rang out again.

"...And if you all managed to fall for that..." Jade stated rising slowly again, and a smirk rose on his face as well. "...Then I believe I have succeeded."

Peony burst out laughing, Nephry looked away from her brother, a sigh escaping her lips. Luke on the other hand looked like he was about to explode.

"Cheers," Jade stated, and his glass lifted. The sound of them clinking together with the rest of his band rang throughout the room. The colonel tossed the drink back with the rest of his friends. Forty years. Forty years now behind him, and another one to follow.

"_A boy shall emerge from forgotten ashes; His fire shall warm your cold heart."_

Jade set down the drink, the chattering of his friends passing through his ears as a low rumble. For the moment, his thoughts were elsewhere.

It wasn't until his sister called him over, that the colonel allowed himself to push his thoughts to the back of his head.

...He had other things to think about at the moment that held far more importance than young boys.

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><p><strong>Please review! <strong>Your thoughts and opinions can help shape this story!


	2. Ashes

-** Chapter Two -**

**_Ashes_  
><strong>

The scratching of a pen echoed throughout the quiet office, its flow never wavering. Amongst the walls lined with plaques and scores of books, another was dutifully being penned by none other than Jade Curtiss, who was still locked away in his office, even at two in the morning.

He was currently unassigned to a particular region in Malkuth, but that didn't mean while he was on break from his military duties, that Jade didn't have anything that needed to be done. There was no such thing as a break. The forty-year-old man was working on a text that had needed to be penned for the past two years...

The adventures he, Luke, Tear, and the others had gone through in their journey to save their world, Auldrant.

No, it wasn't some fantastical fiction or anything of the like: Jade wasn't the type to write about that sort of thing. It was a book that comprised of several different elements, from an autobiographical point of view, as well as the viewpoint of a researcher and doctor. Many different things had occurred on that journey. The more personal elements were being carefully left out to protect the privacy of he and his comrades.

Jade hardly noticed the time, until he set the pen down to get a drink of water. When he spared a glance at the clock, the colonel let out a hum, leaning back a touch into his chair.

"...Early in the morning already," Jade mused to no one in particular. A faint smile lifted on his face as he crossed his legs and folded his hands together. His 40th birthday had came and went, just like that. Jade stole a glance at the thirteen month calender that sat on his desk. It was already the month of Shadow Decan.

And still...

"An old man such as myself should be in bed." Sleep didn't sound bad, now that he had seen the time. He could pick up the rest of this tomorrow. Jade's deep red eyes lowered down to the papers on his desk before starting to put them away.

He made the "old man" jokes now, however soon would come a time when they would be real and not just him teasing. After hitting forward, for every day that went by, he felt it, silly as it sounded. Did he feel washed up? No. Did he feel used? Hardly.

The colonel turned off the light to his office as he headed out.

But, as the year passed him by, there was something he did feel.

The possibility that the next forty years of his life would be the same.

Jade didn't want to admit it, but, as the Scorer droned on, then came to that faithful last prophecy that had every guest attending his birthday party halting in their tracks... a feeling he thought he had lost far back in his youth came to fruitation once more.

...Hope.

"_A boy shall emerge from forgotten ashes; his fire shall warm your cold heart."_

The notion was... ridiculous. It had already been forty years. Jade had become accustomed to being alone.

But for some reason, that one sentence had managed to...

...This was why the Score wasn't read to others anymore. It carved out a strange path that everyone wished to follow. But, this group had access to the Score still, mainly due to their connection with the late Fon Master Ion, and of course Emperor Peony the IX himself.

The Colonel was quick to head to his room in Grand Chokmah to catch some much needed shut-eye.

His peaceful days wouldn't last for long.

* * *

><p>Jade soon found himself aboard the land ship The Seventh Union not even a week later.<p>

It was Lunaday. The Colonel stood on the upper deck of his relatively new land ship, his former one, the Tartarus, having been used in he and the gang's previous world-saving venture for all it was worth. However, Jade wasn't one to hold onto material objects, and thus receiving a new ship was taken in stride with little thought to his previous.

The Seventh Union held eight-hundred personnel, which surprised Jade the slightest. The former land ships that Malkuth had launched only held up to six hundred and sixty, so its size had greatly increased. It seemed his best friend Peony had given him an upgrade. Well, he couldn't say he didn't deserve it.

The Colonel, however, wasn't in his usual impish mood. This was because of the nature of his departure from Grand Chokmah.

Fomicry.

At the moment, Jade sat in his cabin, silent though there was a decent amount of noise that surrounded him aboard the ship. Fomicry was the process of replication by the use of fonons and fonic artes. Fonons, being the basis of the world of Auldrant, were manipulated into a cloning process that could replicate anything: trees, animals...

Even humans.

Jade Curtiss himself had been the one to create the technique, when he was known as Jade Balfour. But...

...That was over thirty years ago.

Jade had long since banned the arte of fomicry. It disregarded human life and cheated death. It lacked moralistic views, and thus, it could only be used for harm. After the war between the kingdom of Malkuth and its corresponding kingdom, Kimlasca, fomicry was regarded even more seriously than before. Fomicry was wrong. It was dangerous.

...But he had created it.

Emperor Peony had summoned him only a few days ago to his throne room. For once, the blond, good-natured King had a stern expression on his face. That in itself piqued Jade's curiosity.

"You're expertise is needed in Keterburg," Peony stated, and Jade was at once even more interested in what his friend had to say. His sister, Nephry, was the governor of Keterburg. It was their hometown. "...It may be nothing, but rumor has it that there's been suspicious activity located to the north of town."

"And it requires me to go up there? Surely Nephry and the task forces already in Keterburg are enough to handle it," Jade supplied, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

The King lowered his eyelids slowly, staring across at Jade.

"...There's a chance that someone has taken to reviving fomicry up to the north," Peony stated firmly from his throne, and Jade's crimson gaze immediately hardened as well in thought. "...A few troops up in Keterburg came across signs of life up in the mountain region, away from the town, and people have been falling to their deaths as if stricken with an illness. There may perhaps be a laboratory of sorts of there; perhaps something we missed during the battles against the God-Generals."

While the forty-year-old colonel _was _paying attention, this thoughts were already blazing through a series of explanations for what the soldiers potentially saw. However, anything involving the word _fomicry_ was worth looking into... especially if it needed to be stopped. If people were dying... it could be the result of their replication data being extracted from their bodies.

"Then I suppose there's little choice." Jade stated, and he offered a friendly bow towards the Emperor. "I'll have my division exported towards Keterburg in three days time."

"Perfect timing," Peony stated, and a small smile rose on his face. "...You can take the new land ship, The Seventh Union.

"...I think you'll enjoy it."

Now, Jade sat aboard The Seventh Union, heading right towards his childhood home. The colonel hoped beyond hope, that the rumors were only that.

A world of replicas wasn't in the future, at least... not for him. Not if he had a say in it. And if you asked him, he did.

...He was, the reluctant Father of Fomicry, after all.

* * *

><p>"Colonel!" A voice called out amongst the harsh snow storm that blasted across The Silver World known as Keterburg. The soldier's voice was barely audible around the clipping breeze and pelting snow. Still, Jade heard it from his position in front of the small task force he had assigned to accompany him through the mountains.<p>

Jade looked back, his long golden-brown hair whipping in the hard breeze along with the tails of his military uniform. The man was used to traveling in cold weather, having grown up in Keterburg. His soldiers, however, were bundled in their cloaks, perhaps wondering what possessed their leader to bring them out in the dead of night to the mountains as they chattered away, freezing. The solider who called out to him rose from where he had been hunched over on the ground.

"I found something!" He called back.

Jade moved through his platoon, the other men stepping back to make way for him. The older man paused, holding out a gloved hand for the object. The soldier handed it off to him, Jade's red eyes peering down at it in the darkness.

"...Looks like the material from a lab coat," Jade stated, rubbing his thumb against the stained, wet shred of fabric. The red-eyed man glanced over to the soldiers that flanked him, then off to the left and right. To his left was a wall of stone, shielded by the curve of a cliff side.

"Fan out to the left, against the stone side," Jade commanded, pointing towards the cliff side area. The troops nodded, heading towards it. "...Make as little noise as possible, to avoid the chance of an avalanche. Inspect everything in sight, and report anything out of the ordinary, no matter how trivial."

Appearances were deceiving, after all.

The crunching of snow under heavy boots echoed through the mountain region as the soldiers fanned out. The colonel followed, reaching out a gloved hand to touch a stone wall. His troops were knocking on the walls. Surely, someone who was hiding a laboratory wouldn't leave something so precious to merely listening to any sort of hollow noise.

...Well, he could think of _one _fool...

Jade lifted both of his hands, and a shimmering green light shot out from between them as he magically solidified a silver spear from seemingly out of nowhere. A couple of troops let out noises of appreciation. With the blunt end, Jade walked along the base of the cliff, striking against the wall at timed intervals. _Tok. Tok. Tok._

_Tink._

Jade paused at the noise. While it wasn't _hollow, _it was a familiar sound. The strike of metal against metal. Jade reared back the handle of his spear again, giving it another hit.

_Tink!_

...How pityingly easy. Though Jade would have no pity for the fools who were behind this door.

The next thing his soldiers knew, Jade had blown a hole into the metal entry way with a concentrated fonic blast of white light. The colonel merely sent them off with a wave of two fingers, his troops filing into the building quickly, guard up. The forty-year-old man escaped in after them, and his eyes flashed red, a trail of lit crimson blood in the darkness.

The cold and chill of Keterburg was left behind them as they hurried inside. Jade didn't like the feeling that was starting to settle deep into his gut; in finding this, it solidified without seeing what he dreading to see: those rumors were not just rumors.

His feet hit concrete; they had entered another room. Another soldier was already looking for a light source, but was quick to report there was none to be found. The others were already making their way through the large room—a laboratory. Jade's sharp eyes were already scanning the area.

Papers littered the floor. The fon machines looked as if they had been taken apart. Supplies and tools were left broken and scattered across countertops. With every pan of the area, Jade's insides hardened with dark emotion. This place had been sloppily abandoned; perhaps only in the past couple of days.

They had missed them.

"All right," Jade stated firmly, and his voice echoed in the concrete and metallic room. "...Compile anything you find. This place was obviously left in disarray, so there should be plenty to collect. Papers and reports, any data on the computers and fon machines, tools and devices: hop to it. Its going to be a long night." He started heading towards the back of the room. "...We will take the information back and forth between here and The Seventh Union. Giles, Khons—head back to Keterburg and alert both the governor and the personnel on The Seventh Union. We can use one of the storage rooms the hold the evidence."

"Yes, Colonel!" Giles and Khons saluted Jade before exiting the compound. Jade watched the rest of his soldiers move about before starting through the laboratory, looking around carefully.

They had missed them by mere _days. _Someone had set up a lab here. It looked relatively new, crude even. It had been built in a hurry. Jade bypassed a couple of dark rooms with glass windows. He opened the doors to all of them... but there was nothing inside.

He rounded to the back of the room, leaving his soldiers behind. The sound of his boots against concrete echoed loudly in his ears. He came to a dead end. Nothing more lingered down the hall, except another glass room. Jade walked towards it, glancing into the darkness. He could see his reflection perfectly in the glass.

This room was different. The majority of the wall was glass—so was the door. There was a massive metal padlock on the outside of the door that caught his attention, clinging to the handle. The others had been unlocked. Though Jade made no movements, his hair suddenly stood on end.

_...There was something inside that they wanted to keep locked away._

But, the clues didn't add up. The door was locked, but the walls were made of glass. With enough force, whatever was inside could easily break through. A solid titanium room would have been what they would have used to keep locked away something that was particularly violent. It was that thought process that had Jade's hands slowly gaining a tight grip on his spear.

He rose it, and, with a quick strike, cut the padlock right off the door with a clatter. The device fell to the concrete floor unceremoniously.

Inside, Jade could hear something move.

Only the glass stood in between him and whatever lay inside. Jade's red eyes peered into the darkness.

A ghostly white palm slapped against the glass.

Jade's eyes widened as he stepped back. But, as the hand relaxed against the glass, a figure came into view, its skin almost as white as the driven snow of Keterburg. The figure itself was somewhat tall, and slender as it slowly came into view. Long, black, wispy hair cascaded down thin shoulders and disappeared into the darkness. Thin fingers curled against the glass helplessly.

The figure lifted its head, staring up at Jade with mismatched eyes of sun gold and sky blue. A pert, pink mouth breathed heavily against the glass, fogging it up as one faint word left it.

"_...Help."_

The thin, naked body that had pressed itself into the cold glass slid downwards, and out of sight. Jade threw the door open hurriedly.

...It was just a boy.

As Jade bent down in the freezing cold, sterile glass room and lifted the willowy boy up in his arms, several thoughts charged through his mind. Was this boy one of the test subjects? He had to have been, there was no doubt about that. However, there was no labeling on the door that said if he was the original, or the replica.

...Why had this one been left behind? By the looks of things... it seemed they were hoping he would have starved to death. There were far too many questions and not enough answers.

With him, perhaps they would be able to find out information about the individuals who had set this place up. For now, the priority was collecting as much information as possible... and getting this one to a safe place.

Jade looked down to the boy who lay still in his arms. He was still alive, at least. A corpse would do him no good. The colonel let his eyes sweep once in the glass room, before heading out.

...Once the boy awoke in Keterburg...

Perhaps he would have some answers.

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><p><strong>Please Review!<strong> Thank you for reading! I hope you look forward to the next chapter!


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